Overview

People who use drugs in Toronto have long advocated for access to drug checking in an effort to reduce the harms associated with using drugs from the unregulated supply. In collaboration with its partners, the CDPE was able to make that happen by acquiring funding to support the design and implementation of an offsite drug checking pilot program, which came to be known as Toronto’s Drug Checking Service.

Over the course of the pilot period, which ran from October 10, 2019, to June 30, 2023, more than 10,000 samples from Toronto’s unregulated drug supply were checked and over 450 unique drugs were identified – many of which can be directly linked to overdose. Service users, who submitted substance or used equipment samples to be checked, were provided with detailed information on the composition of their drugs, along with tailored strategies to reduce harm and referrals to drug-related, health, and social services via integrated community health agencies (Moss Park Consumption and Treatment Service, Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre and the TRIP! Project, South Riverdale Community Health Centre, The Works at Toronto Public Health). Samples were analyzed by the clinical laboratories at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and St. Michael’s Hospital. Beyond educating individual service users, results for all samples were collated and analyzed to perform unregulated drug market monitoring, then translated and publicly disseminated every other week to communicate drug market trends to those who could not directly access the service, as well as to inform care for people who use drugs, advocacy, policy, and research.

Drug checking pilot programs in Toronto, across British Columbia, and elsewhere proved to have a positive and quantifiable impact on responding to Canada’s toxic drug supply crisis. For example, drug checking:

• Provides potentially life-saving information to those at highest risk of overdose
• Facilitates behaviour change that reduces the risk of overdose
• Provides a new gateway to accessing harm reduction services
• Provides the only source of real time monitoring and public dissemination of unregulated drug market trends
• Provides data that informs clinicians and care and improves health and social services
• Is valuable to people who use drugs, empowering them to advocate for themselves and help develop solutions that impact them

Toronto’s Drug Checking Service has become an international authority on drug checking service provision and unregulated drug market monitoring for opioid overdose prevention. The program, which has a provincial mandate in Ontario, now operates from its own unit within MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions at St. Michael’s Hospital, a site of Unity Health Toronto. For more information, please visit www.drugchecking.community.

The CDPE continues to work collaboratively with Toronto’s Drug Checking Service and conduct scientific research on the program.

Financial Supporters

Health Canada | St. Michael’s Hospital Foundation

Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Misuse (CRISM)